


Catharsis

by chewsdaychillin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, not like... a fix it just... more of them talking and apologising after all that went down, on apologies and forgiveness, post mag198, relationships r hard apolcalypses are hard the boys r communicating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 05:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30067290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewsdaychillin/pseuds/chewsdaychillin
Summary: ‘Hi,’ Martin says gently. He looks tired too, collapsed a little onto the hands in his pockets.‘Hi.’Jon waits. They’re still sort of warming back up into normal after all that. The ladder felt normal, (hah) but...It’s a little awkward. He watches his boyfriend sigh and fiddle with the lining of his apocalypse-worn jeans.‘Are we okay?’
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 12
Kudos: 121





	Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> so i didnt dislike the ep or the convo they had or anything i jus couldnt stop thinking about it so

Before they can have their talk, there’s drinks to find and breathers to take and the many, many scrapes that come with falling a long way off a cliff-face to bandage up. 

Jon bustles off to find them because he needs to be doing something, and the lethargy and sadness the others will resign themselves to doing it with will just irritate him. That might be unfair. The fact he’s thinking unfairly harsh things just proves he needs to be doing something. 

But actually as he rummages through the boxes in the corner of what was only the other day Their Room, tossing and kicking blankets where every touch appalls him, it all seems to hit at once. 

The emotion and hurt and worry and confusion and the truth of _alternate realities_ along with the exhaustion he’s only allowed in the tunnels. His head hangs over the box with the weight of a long, long sigh. 

There’s a sympathetic noise from behind him and a shuffling in the doorway. He looks round and tries for a weak smile. Judging from Martin’s expression he’s not quite pulling it off. 

‘Hi,’ Martin says gently. He looks tired too, collapsed a little onto the hands in his pockets.

‘Hi.’

Jon waits in an awkward squat over the boxes. His ankles aren’t the strings, but taking a even a second of a break from scouring for plasters and wine makes going back to it feel pretty impossible. Plus they’re still sort of warming back up into normal after all that. The ladder felt normal, (hah) but... 

It’s a little awkward. He watches his boyfriend sigh and fiddle with the lining of his apocalypse-worn jeans. 

‘Are we okay?’

Jon sighs and gives up on the smile. ‘Yes, yes, it’s... it’s okay, it's just-‘ he flops onto their makeshift bed and sits with his elbows on his knees. ‘You really scared me.’

Martin steps gingerly into the room. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, opening his arms. ‘Can I-?’

Jon nods and sags with relief as he’s pulled into a close hug, his arms crossed tight around Martin’s neck where they fit naturally, the gentle scrape of slight stubble nuzzled against his cheek. They stay there for a long time, calming down with the indisputable, physical presence of the other against them. Martin’s heartbeat slows down against Jon’s chest. The slow rubs up and down Jon’s back relax each exhale into a sigh that drops him heavier into the warm arms holding him up. 

Eventually they slide apart to just sitting close, hands still slung where they had been. Jon frowns as he pulls a sticky string of leftover cobweb from Martin’s hair. Martin makes a face and breathes half a laugh before his face crumples. He takes jon’s hand and squeezes it.

‘I just... I was worried,’ he explains again, ‘and I _really_ wanted there to be another option. I couldn't... it scared me thinking about you in his place and hearing you argue it like it was where you wanted to be... you scared me too, okay? She said there was another way and I so, _so_ desperately wanted to be right and... and I kind of wanted you to be wrong.’ He sighs, looking down at their hands and rubbing a thumb over Jon’s knuckles, clear now of cuts that have healed themselves, but still dusted in dirt. ‘I really am sorry that it happened like that, I just. Couldn't not go.’

Jon sighs and adds his other hand to the pile they’re making in his lap. ‘I understand. I do and I know we- we probably did need to hear it.’ 

It likely still sounds like he’s justifying it though, reasoning away the rush of panic and the sting of what had hit at first like betrayal. 

Martin hears it of course. And he would take more than that one conversation to feel absolved of guilt. ‘But d’you forgive me?’

He sounds small enough that Jon does, completely and without any awkwardness. 

‘Of course,’ he promises, raising their pile of hands and kissing the rusted cuts on Martin’s fingers. Another blemish he didn’t ask for from the horror that is the world he’s trying to fix. ‘Of course I do. I'm sorry if I wasn't... so receptive to your explanation earlier it just. It was all still... a lot to process. You being taken, and by the Web, of all things, already felt like my worst nightmare. A-and then what with doors and giant spiders and webs and the tapes I just...’

He can’t quite finish that. It’s still hard to unpick it all, the terror he’d felt knowing he was walking into a blindspot. Knowing he’d have to knock on that front door. And, ultimately, under all the apocalyptic threat and reimagined trauma, there’d been the slight resentment that he had been _going_ to apologise. They were going to make up after that ridiculous row, and instead- 

‘You were still annoyed,’ Martin supplies with a shrug. ‘I get it. I would be.’

He nods. ‘I was still working off being scared. Plus the adrenaline, and...’ 

‘I’m sorry I... I know you don't like her. Or spiders.’

‘No. Or you disappearing.’ 

Martin nods sheepishly. ‘Thank you for coming after me.’ He smiles. ‘Again.’

‘Always,’ Jon promises, pulling him into another hug. 

‘We're okay?’ 

‘Yes, we're okay.’ He wraps his arms even tighter. ‘Just don't ever scare me like that again.’

He’s half joking, has to be with the world like this. But he wishes it fervently and tries keep his tone stern despite them both chuckling. 

‘Hmm. I wish I could,’ Martin sighs as they slip back again. ‘Actually make that promise and stand a chance of keeping it.’

‘Yeah, probably not.’ There’s a little lull that Jon knows he’ll be hating, so he tries to be optimistic, pragmatic. ‘But we're together now, right? Till the end.’

‘Yeah,’ Martin agrees, ‘together.’ 

Jon reaches for his chin. They seal it with a kiss and then it finally feels properly over. 

‘And you're alright?’ He asks as they stay on the bed a while longer. ‘Definitely?’

Martin makes a face. ‘Ugh. Yeah. Didn't love being dangled over the gateway to another dimension much but I suppose I did bring it on myself.’

There is still some of the webbing stuck behind his ear. ‘You said she played it up?’

‘Yeah, she said it had to look like I was kidnapped for your benefit, but I think she just wanted that reveal to be on her own terms. I said you'd be more likely to listen if I _wasn’t_ in mortal peril but, you know.’ He rolls his eyes, like the giant spider avatar of the Web is just another rude commuter and Jon can’t help laughing with him. ‘It's all my way or the highway with her.’

‘Hmm.’

‘And how're you?’ He asks, stroking down Jon’s cheek and squeezing his shoulder. ‘That was a lot to hear, wasn't it.’

It’s not a question but Jon still nods emphatically. ‘Yes it was. I’m... fine. I suppose.’

‘No you're not,’ Martin tells him fondly. 

‘No,’ he agrees, I, uh- he reaches, but can’t find the words, so instead makes a frustrated sound and bumps his forehead on Martin’s shoulder. ‘’A lot’ is an accurate descriptor.’

Martin doesn’t push him, just hums and strokes his arm. ‘What Annabelle said about their plan... it being you and the tapes all along...’

Jon closes his eyes against his safe space in Martin’s jumper. He was rather dreading this coming up. He takes a second, a long breath, reminding the irrational part of his pain that jumps when poked with a stick that it’s not going to be blamed for this here. Not in this room. Not by anyone but himself, which still hurts but is an ache by now.

He sits up. ‘Yes.’

‘You believe that?’

‘I suppose,’ he shrugs. Martin waits for him to go on so he tries his best to. ‘I can believe it. It’s... it's a very painful sense of deja vu, to be honest. Being the pawn again. Being helpless in some grand game all planned from the start. Being chosen. The centre of everything.’ He sounds bitter spitting that out and only realises then how angry he is. ‘And why me? At least Jonah said I was unlucky. With the Web... why choose me? I was eight.’ 

His voice to crack a little and he coughs it out. 

‘Yeah,’ Martin sighs, still stroking that soothing hand. ’Yeah.’ Then he says - ‘You know, I’m not sure she did. I don't know if I believe it.’

Knowing that of course, of course he’d be absolved, Jon raises a skeptical eyebrow. ‘Really?’ 

Martin huffs at him. ‘What do you mean really?! You're the one always telling me not to take her at her word.’ He chews on his lip like he’s thinking, so Jon doesn’t jump to correct him even though he’s right. ‘You know she told me about, like six other plans, and there was way less childhood destiny in those. Way more spiders.’ He shudders. ‘She said some of them were ruined by you coming after me, in the Lonely. If she was trying to get you marked the whole time, wouldn't she _want_ you to go after me?’ 

Jon frowns, trying to consider that while holding back the part of him committed to tearing every argument in his favour down. In the moment that act had been nothing more than desperate. Knowing the way into the Lonely hadn’t been premeditated, or planned, only assumed and obvious. Of course he would go. Without question. It is as strange and uncomfortable now as it was after learning Jonah had planned it to consider that the decision had been anything else. That someone else had known of course he would. That he’d always been meant to. 

But if Annabelle had meant him to... perhaps she was lying. To Martin. To one of them at least. Maybe _she_ sent Peter Lukas to head the institute. Maybe _she_ sent Oliver to wake him up. Always with the view of sending him into the fog. But then why would she lie? Why cover it up when she must know they’d compare notes? Perhaps-

He shakes his head. Thinking about the Web’s intentions always muddles it.

‘I suppose,’ he says slowly.

Martin takes his admission and runs with it. ‘She's just trying to get under our skin,’ he insists. ‘Telling me the whole plan was using me to get to you. Telling you you're a lynch pin and everything's your fault.’ 

‘Fine,’ Jon allows him, but the part of him that’s angry and the part that’s guilt have to go somewhere. ‘ _Or_ perhaps it _is_ my fault and she’s relying on the fact you’re always the first to exonerate me.’ 

‘Jon,’ Martin tuts, taking his cheek into the warm, cut and dirty palm of his hand, ‘if something _is_ your fault, you know I’m not going to lie about it. But none of this was before, and it isn’t now.’ He ignores Jon’s sound of protest and goes on fiercely. ‘You’re blaming the apocalypse on an eight year old for _existing._ I think she was relying on the fact you _always_ think things are your fault. She knows that, that's why she said that to you and something else entirely to me. She wants us both spiralling, it’s- it’s bullshit is what it is!’

He splutters into almost shouting and misplaces Jon’s amused huff as a flinch. ‘Sorry.’

Jon shakes his head _it’s fine_ and leans into the familiar hand against his face. The thumb that fits with practice under his brow bone is grounding, and honestly the shouting feels cathartic. It’s nice, actually, to get to feel really _angry_ \- not at himself, not at Martin. At all of this. And to have someone to be angry on his behalf who will always be soft with his scars. 

‘Sorry, but I really don't believe it.’ Martin shrugs flippantly, again shoving Annabelle and her mind games away from their little bubble. Then he clicks his tongue gently and pulls them back together. ‘Come here,’ he murmurs, ‘I love you. I'm sorry you had to hear all that.’

After all that it’s the simplicity that makes a tear leak out. It feels purgative too. Jon lets it melt between his cheek and Martin’s shoulder. 

‘Thank you,’ he says, pressing a kiss wherever it lands. ‘I love you too.’

**Author's Note:**

> it it turns out annabelle wasnt lying and the web really did pick jon at 8 for this then call me a clown but it seems fake to me 
> 
> ty uwu i cant believe we r so close to the end :((( like comment subscribe etc xx i will still probs be posting tma fic :)


End file.
